1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an intracoelomic suturing and ligating method for suturing and ligating a body tissue using two manipulators inside a body cavity.
2. Description of the Related Art
According to endoscopic surgery (also called laparoscopic surgery), it is customary to form a plurality of incisions on the body surface of a patient, insert trocars (tubular instruments) respectively into the incisions to define forceps instrument passage ports, and introduce tip ends of forceps instruments including shafts through the respective trocars into the body cavity in order to perform a surgical operation on the affected body part. Working units, such as a gripper for gripping a living tissue, scissors, an electrosurgical knife blade, etc., are mounted onto tip ends of such forceps instruments.
An endoscopic surgical operation performed by means of the forceps instruments requires a surgeon to be trained in advance, because the working space within the body cavity is small. Further, the forceps instruments need to be operated using the trocars as fulcrums. Since conventional forceps instruments that have been used heretofore do not have joints in the working unit at the distal end thereof, such forceps instruments tend to have a small degree of freedom, and the working unit can be operated only on an extension of the shaft. Therefore, cases that can be handled in accordance with the usual training practice for endoscopic surgery are confined to a certain range. Moreover, a surgeon needs to be trained and have a considerably high level of skill in order to perform endoscopic surgery on other cases that do not fall within the limited range.
Attempts have been made to improve conventional forceps instruments, so as to develop a forceps instrument including a plurality of joints in the working unit thereof (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,853,879). Such a forceps instrument, which also is referred to as a manipulator, is free of the limitations and difficulties of conventional forceps instruments, can be operated easily, and can be applied to a wide variety of surgical cases. It is expected that the developed forceps instrument will be applied to techniques requiring intricate manipulative actions within small spaces, for example.
In particular, it is preferable for a suturing and ligating process to be facilitated within limited spaces inside of a body cavity, which heretofore has been difficult to perform.